


last light

by kalypsobean



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Dwarf Gender Concepts, Dwarf/Elf Relationship(s), F/M, FTM Kíli, Gender Dysphoria, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mpreg, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 05:43:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5445377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kíli always had to hide, and never felt safe, until he was around her. The war changes things for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	last light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AngstyChaosMagicUser](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngstyChaosMagicUser/gifts).



> Please see end notes for spoilery notes on trans Kíli - if you need to read them first because trans issues affect you, skip down.

They say, in their oldest songs, that Aulë made them without the blessing of Eru. The most jealous, the most angry of them, say that's why they came out wrong: short, slow and clumsy, good with the earth but scorned of the sky. 

Kíli knows that's true, though in truth he's only heard the old songs in snatches, in between sneaking from his bed and watching the oldest of them at their craft, the working songs timing the bellows and the hammers. Nobody knows him well enough to see the mistakes, not even Fíli. He was grateful when his beard began to grow in, though it was sparser and shorter than that of most others of his age; they said he was gentle, that he was a dreamer. 

They never guessed that he didn't look like the way he felt; no nephew of Thorin would be any less than perfect. 

 

He joined the Quest of Erebor to be close to his uncle; he had wanted to learn how to be more like him - how to move so he took up more space than he filled, how to hew stone and rock like it parted as if asked, how to charm the attention of others until he held them spellbound. Fíli followed him, none the wiser, and he was grateful.

 

But all his dreams and hopes had brought him here; he lies on a table in a strange house in a town filled with Men like those who had treated him with disdain all his life, and though his mind is tinged with the fever, that which wracks his body and draws warmth out of his chest and leaves him shivering with cold, he knows enough to be terrified. He can't stop them, if they decide to change him; they'll find out, they'll know he's wrong. The Men will laugh at him, his brother will look at him differently, and the others, those who remain... he cannot imagine what they will do, after their journey.

Instead, they bring her. He'd talked to her, he even felt _safe_ with her, as if she would understand. She didn't expect anything of him, then, so he didn't have to pretend, or be aware of everything he did in case it betrayed him; that was when she was on the other side of the bars, still distant and untouchable, still unattainable. There is nothing between them now. He tries to get up, but he can barely move, and even if he could have, there is nowhere for him to go. 

He can't let her find out like this, but he can do nothing; he's not even sure that what he's seeing is real, now, for she is glowing, and reaching for him, and the light feels like safe and home and he can't help but let it in when she looks at him as if to ask permission. 

He feels it stirring inside him, soon after he relaxes into the light. Tauriel backs away, and the world comes back, and she looks at him; he expects horror, perhaps, or revulsion, but instead he can't identify the way she looks at him, and he falls into a dreamless sleep soon after.

 

There isn't time for more; for though they ride to war together, they remain separate. It is well, he thinks, for he can barely cope with his body changing without her to see through his layers. It is all he can do to hide it; he channels the emotions into rage, with little regard to its target, and though he knows Fíli has seen the way he wraps the skins tighter over his body as if still recovering from the fever, his body has not yet changed enough that he has to always be conscious of it, not yet, not all the time.

 

He can sense her when she is close, like the thing inside him is crying out to her, and her presence, though faint, is the only thing that quiets it. It isn't enough; he doesn't tell anybody that she's there, so he has no reason to search her out and no way to ask for the closeness he yearns for. He wishes he was wiser in the ways of the Elves; though he had been raised to see them as enemies, he had learned much of their magical abilities. Fíli had always called them fairy tales and told him to beware when he dreamed of meeting one, but he knows if he was just a bit stronger, a bit more learned, he could reach out to her. He wants to feel safe again, for out here there are no close ceilings and tight walls, and so there is nowhere to hide.

He never quite gets to sleep, afraid of what might happen if someone sees when he is unable to cover it, and though they're all tired, he knows that Fíli has seen that he rests more than the others, that Thorin has seen it too. They keep him close, though in Thorin's rage it feels more as if he is being guarded, as a treasure or a thing. 

 

It grows much more quickly than he'd expected, faster than the babes he'd seen before they left home, and it hurts him when it moves. He stays behind, again, though he knows Tauriel is not far away; her presence is clouded by the army around her, and for the first time he is afraid not of what will happen if he is found out, but what will happen if he is not. The war rages around them in a chaotic tangle of limbs and weapons that appears to him as almost dreamlike. He can feel her grief, though he cannot tell if it is from what she has lost or what may yet be taken away; he holds onto it even at night, when the pyres burn low and the air weighs heavy with ash and blood. But after the war, no matter the outcome, though it feels treasonous to prepare for a loss, he will have nowhere to go. He is clumsy, and slow, and small, and all those things Aulë made them to be; she is not, and they fit together only because they fill the spaces the other cannot take up, only because this thing binds them more surely than any oath he could speak.

It is that weakness, the way the thing changed how he moved, that it hurt at the wrong time, that means the Orcs find him; the last thing he sees is her, her hair flying in the wind as she leaps in front of him.

The last thing he knows is her light around him, for the thing is quiet, quiet enough for him to understand that part of it came from him too.

**Author's Note:**

> AngstyChaosMagicUser requested trans!Kíli with mpreg, preferably Kíliel.
> 
> To make Kíli read as trans, I used the idea that dwarf women look like the men (ref: TTT) and that allowed him to pass. He has never told anyone, and he hasn't had any kind of surgery or counselling, because this is Middle Earth and because he wasn't ready to come out to anyone to get it, even if it was possible in his circumstances (you know, being a relatively poor, semi-itinerant, largely maligned minority). He becomes pregnant when Tauriel heals him because of the mingling of their life forces, along the same lines as the theory that Arwen passed her immortality to Frodo. Unfortunately, as Kíli was so used to hating his own body and with the war, he didn't have anyone he could talk to about it, and so it turned out sad. If the war hadn't been going on, you can read the ending as he would have been able to cope with having the child. And, if you really really want, you can pretend that he just got knocked out and they have a happy ending on the run from everyone they ever knew ever. 
> 
> I am *not* trans, so the way Kíli feels is drawn from my feelings as genderfluid and what I've heard from people who have chosen to transition or alter their presentation. This experience is not the same for everyone, and some people may think Kíli would have acted differently based on their experience or interpretation. If that is the case, please write your own version of events so we can have wider non-binary representation here.


End file.
